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Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

cs.uml.edu

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Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#51

Post by NetMageSCW »

mghackerlady wrote: post #4

I'm adding this to my repertoire of HIGs to study for a new desktop environment project I'm working on. I'm trying to synthesize the best parts of every computer interaction method, primarily focusing on desktops but looking at mobile designs as well. There are 2 principle reasons for this project: 1. UNIX desktops objectively suck compared to their Mac and Windows cousins, either being too complex to learn and bomba…

Consider picking up Alan Cooper’s (perhaps somewhat dated) UI books for some useful perspective in thinking about UIs outside the experienced computer user mindset.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#52

Post by NetMageSCW »

hypercube33 wrote: post #30
mghackerlady wrote: post #4

I'm adding this to my repertoire of HIGs to study for a new desktop environment project I'm working on. I'm trying to synthesize the best parts of every computer interaction method, primarily focusing on desktops but looking at mobile designs as well. There are 2 principle reasons for this project: 1. UNIX desktops objectively suck compared to their Mac and Windows cousins, either being too complex to learn and bomba…

If you're looking at Windows peak was like Win2000

Nah - peak was Windows 7.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#53

Post by cbdevidal »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #2

I still miss my palm treo, the stylus, and physical keyboard. 20 plus years later and I still cannot use an apple pencil on my iphone... >:(

I carried a Palm Treo 700p until about five years ago. Only as a PDA, no phone or internet access. I used to swear I’d be buried with a Palm in my pocket.

But now I am feeling the same way about my iPhone. You can have my iPhone when you take it from my cold, dead…

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#54

Post by Brian_K_White »

I miss the whole Palm ecosystem.

I have noted many times that I had a slab phone with full screen color icon grid general purpose os with internet and countless 3rd party apps for every conceivable purpose,... 7 full years before the iphone. 8 years before the iphone had 3rd party apps.

And it wasn't Android it was a Samsung SPH-i300 running PalmOS.

It was great that there was not really much of an app store, you got apps individually more or less like desktop os apps. There might have been app stores that collected apps but I don't remember ever using any.

I had apps for everything the same as today. Even though the screen was only like 160x240 and the internet was 14.4k, I had browser & email of course, but also ssh, irc, I even had a vnc client! Audible.com player, countless random things like a netmask calculator, resistor color code app, a few different generic db apps where you design your own fields and input/display screens etc. 3rd party phone dialer that integrated the contacts db. I must be forgetting a hundred other things.

The OS wasn't open source but at least the apps could be, so pretty much like windows & mac.

All in all I'd prefer Android where the entire system is open, except Google has somehow managed to make the real world life with Android less open than PalmOS was, even though PalmOS wasn't open source and I think even the development system wasn't free either.

I think the "somehow" is the extremely integrated app store. Previously, if there were any app stores, they didn't really matter. It didn't hurt you not to be in them because hardly any users were either. But today it's basically just a technicality to say that you don't have to be in the official app store, and not even theoretically/technically true in many cases.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#55

Post by sam1714 »

DaanDL wrote: post #49
relium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best book I've ever read on the topic was the classic Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines. I still recommend them even though some of the specifics are out-of-date. https://dev.os9.ca/techpubs/mac/pdf/HIGuidelines.pdf

I wonder how much of their own guidelines they violated with MacOS Tahoe.

As they should. There are fundamental differences in hardware and capability between 1992 and 2026.

The most immediate are pull-down menus at the top of the screen. They work good on a 9 inch screen, they are awful with 27 inch displays.

Another related change are modal dialog boxes. When you have a 9 inch screen you're fundamentally looking at one document in one app at a time. When you got 2 27's that's not true anymore.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#57

Post by hypercube33 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #21
jimmaswell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is KDE like that? If you don't go out of your way to change options, you aren't "bombarded" with anything, it just works.

Can only speak for myself but the problem is that with KDE there's always stuff I need to go in and change because I don't like the defaults, and then I fall into a rabbit hole of endless tweaking from which it's difficult to escape because no matter how much time I spend I can never get it to be just right.

Funny I feel the same about gnome. I haven't played with others enough to comment I suppose but all are missing some basic creature comfort stuff like a full tcp/up config dialog or a real fluid working app store out of the box. Distros add these but what is going on here.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#59

Post by cosmic_cheese »

hypercube33 wrote: post #57
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can only speak for myself but the problem is that with KDE there's always stuff I need to go in and change because I don't like the defaults, and then I fall into a rabbit hole of endless tweaking from which it's difficult to escape because no matter how much time I spend I can never get it to be just right.

Funny I feel the same about gnome. I haven't played with others enough to comment I suppose but all are missing some basic creature comfort stuff like a full tcp/up config dialog or a real fluid working app store out of the box. Distros add these but what is going on here.

The thing with GNOME is having to stack a bunch of extensions (most of which will only somewhat meet your needs) to get desired features, half of which will break periodically because there’s no stable extension API.

GNOME and KDE sit on extreme opposite ends of the minimalist/maximalist spectrum.

Re: Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

#60

Post by wao0uuno »

jimmaswell wrote: post #16
mghackerlady wrote: post #4

I'm adding this to my repertoire of HIGs to study for a new desktop environment project I'm working on. I'm trying to synthesize the best parts of every computer interaction method, primarily focusing on desktops but looking at mobile designs as well. There are 2 principle reasons for this project: 1. UNIX desktops objectively suck compared to their Mac and Windows cousins, either being too complex to learn and bomba…

How is KDE like that? If you don't go out of your way to change options, you aren't "bombarded" with anything, it just works.

I love KDE, especially since Plasma 6 release but oh man is the Settings program poorly designed and littered with settings 99% of users will never need.

So many options placed seemingly at random. Similar options like lockscreen, login screen and desktop background settings spread out over 3 different main categories.

Customization options so extensive and granular one can only wonder about their purpose. Even in their latest release blog post they chose to brag about the new ability to change intensity/thickness of frames. I don't think most people care about stuff like this.

Until recently defaults were straight up insane like single click to open folders/launch programs, touchpad scroll being inverted etc.

If you navigate to Settings -> Sound you'll be presented with some options but also buttons in the top right that will open a mostly empty screen with a few additional options. Why not split the whole page into parts and present everything on a single screen? Why not tabs?

Sometimes those buttons in the top right have different behavior. Some will open a whole new page ansd sometimes it's just a popup and other times it's a dropdown.

And oh man just navigating Settings sucks. Main list consists of single and two level options with two level options opening another, mostly empty vertical pane so the actual size of the right pane changes with top text jumping around depending on what you press. So why some settings have two levels and some have tabs and some have those junky top right buttons that need their own back button to show up in the interface whenever they're pressed? I'm not for or against any of those design choices but why all of them at random? I just want some goddamn consistency.

Cherry on top is the bloat most distros choose to install alongside Plasma desktop. Dragon Player? kMail? Does anyone even use these? I dislike Gnome a lot but at least their preinstalled software is minimal, elegant and actively supported/developed. Most KDE programs look like they stopped receiving updates in 2008.

I still think it's a great DE but there's much room for improvement.

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